Monday, November 23, 2009

Out of Print Digital Relics: The Chosen Few

I've posted a handful of these Out of Print Digital Relics but I haven't done one for a while. This is because it seems like pretty much every album I've considered posting has already been posted elsewhere by someone else. (Even This Kind of Punishment.)

However, I recently was talking with some friends of mine about the recent Death reissue, and opined that if they dug that band's reworking of vintage Detriot rock action, they really needed to hear Australia's the Chosen Few. Alas, the band's mammoth The Joke's On Us EP was no where to be found on the internet. I could have sworn I had seen it before. Perhaps the Chosen Few are litigious types. (I guess I'll find out soon.)

In any case, The Joke's On Us, the Chosen Few's only release, is definitely on my list of top 10 punk rock singles of all time. (I included a cut from it on one of my all punk podcasts.) It's an absolutely vicious take on the Detriot sound, surely learned by way of Radio Birdman's Dennis Tek. It has all the nasty guitar riff-age one might expect but it's played in ferocious manner akin to early US hardcore. It's like the soundtrack to a riot erupting at the pub. The Joke's On Us is right up there with the Negative Approach single as one of the purest expressions of sonic violence ever committed to vinyl.

The EP is included in its entirety as the first six tracks on the Root & A Beer CD. The remainder of the collection is made up of never-released studio and live cuts, including covers of the similarly minded Radio Birdman, Johnny Moped and Coloured Balls. As you're listening to it, head on over to breakmyface.com to read a much more thorough history of the band.

Rock music from the margins: eardrum-testing lo-fi, raunchy garage, vicious but delicious punk, bizarro new wave, unpopular pop, non-pusillanimous indie rock and much more. From meat and potatoes to chromosome-damaged.